Earlier this week, the Blur multiplayer beta kicked off. We’ve played through everything it has to offer and have come away impressed. Blur comes to us from Bizarre Creations, a development house that is no stranger to racers as they have spent the last decade or so with the Project Gotham series. In fact, you can keep your Gran Turismos and Forzas – ever since I first played Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast I’ve been a fan of Bizarre Creations’ take on the genre. A Bizarre Creations racer has something that the hardcore simulations just don’t: style.

Blur takes the arcade-like feel from the studio’s past games and shifts it into high gear. The game is a highly stylized racer with plenty of beautiful neon lights and flashy effects, but there’s more to it than that. I think it can best be described as Super Mario Kart with badass cars and vastly improved visuals. Instead of 150cc karts, you’ll be juicing around the tracks in a BMW M3, Lotus Exige or Ford GT – considerably more exciting than the karts. Races aren’t won on speed alone, the power ups you grab and how well you use them will push you to the front of the pack or seal your fate at the back.

The demo had a fair amount of power ups. Some of these were geared towards offense, while others were for protection. You have a health meter in Blur and it depletes as you wreck into walls, other cars or take hits from enemy power ups. There’s a shield that will absorb damage and you can patch up any damage by picking up a recovery power up. The offensive powers include mines, a triple shot projectile, a tracking shot, a series of EMP bursts, a close range blast and a nitro boost. At any given time you can hold up to three of these powers by driving over their respective icons on the track. You can cycle through them and use them accordingly. You can also drop a power back on the track by pressing the Y button (360). This is a really nice feature that lets you get rid of unwanted powers and make room for others. Using the powers at the right times is key and just like in Super Mario Kart, most items can be fired backwards. This allows you not only to attack opponents that may be gaining on you, but it can also save you from damage as an enemy power up coming from behind will be destroyed if it hits your own. The nitro boost can also be fired in reverse. This will slow you down very quickly and while you may not use this often, it can be handy in certain situations such as when you’re barreling out of control towards a cliff and your brakes won’t cut it.

The power ups also serve another purpose; by driving well, winning races and scoring hits on other racers, you will earn fans. Blur implements a ranking system and you need to gather fans to increase your rank. Ranking up will unlock new features in the game. In the demo, ranking up earned you new vehicles, access to new game modes and also new loadouts. A loadout is a special set of bonuses you get for each race and they are completely customizable. These bonuses include things such as earning more fans during a race, doing extra damage to opponents, starting a race with a random power up and more. Loadout sets can be named so you can give them a more appropriate title if you don’t like the game’s default option.

The demo featured four modes. Skirmish Race and Powered Up Race were identical except for the number of players involved. Skirmish was for 2 – 10 players while Powered Up races allowed up to 20 racers at once. The goal here was to use power ups to your advantage and try to win the race. Motor Mash was another game mode. This game type was somewhat reminiscent of a Twisted Metal match. You and your opponents are put into an arena and the winner is the car the causes the most damage in the specified amount of time. The last mode available in the demo was another race, but this time it was using super high performance vehicles. The speed difference between theses races and the others is intense. The Class A cars approach ludicrous speed and will definitely test your reflexes. I had a lot of fun with all the game modes, but feel that the Motor Mash is probably the weakest of the bunch with the super car racing being the most exhilarating.

There were a few other modes that were visible in the demo, but locked; a bit of a tease by the developer. The most interesting of these was Community Events. I’m not sure what Bizarre Creations has in store for players, but it sounds promising. This suggests that we will see continued support for the game after the initial release.

The number of tracks and cars in the demo is somewhat limited, but the tracks are all unique. Some are street courses, some feature off road action and there is even a race around loading docks where large shipping crates act as serious road hazards. The cars varied nicely too and included everything from hatchbacks to large SUV’s and super cars. The final game will showcase over fifty real world cars from various manufacturers.

The beta features great visuals, stylized effects, high speed thrills and realistic car damage with a fantastic arcade-like feel. It is apparent that Bizarre Creations is really focusing on the community. In addition to the Community Events game mode mentioned earlier, the game is integrated with Twitter so you can tweet about your progress in the game to your friends. It also features leaderboards that let you compare various statistics with your buddies. Blur is scheduled to hit retail shelves this May, and judging from the beta, it will be one hell of a good time for racing fans.